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Palestinian with pickax kills West Bank teenager

Israelis react in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Bat Ayin on Thursday after an ax-wielding Palestinian went on a rampage, killing a 13-year-old Israeli boy and wounding a 7-year-old. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Sebastian Scheiner Associated Press
Israelis react in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Bat Ayin on Thursday after an ax-wielding Palestinian went on a rampage, killing a 13-year-old Israeli boy and wounding a 7-year-old. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

BAT AYIN, West Bank – A Palestinian killed an Israeli teenager with a pickax and seriously injured a 7-year-old boy in a rampage through this West Bank Jewish settlement Thursday, posing an early test for the country’s new hard-line government.

Israeli media broadcast pictures of the body of 13-year-old Shlomo Nativ, bespectacled with long sidecurls and a large skullcap worn by observant Jews. The images also showed the red pickax on the ground with drops of blood splattered on a road.

The attacker escaped the scene and Israeli troops, joined by bearded settlers armed with automatic rifles, were conducting a manhunt in the area. In the nearby Palestinian village of Safa, troops searched houses and rounded up residents in a schoolyard. The military said all roads around the settlement of Bat Ayin were closed.

The settlement is notorious in Israel for being the base of the so-called “Bat Ayin Underground,” whose members were arrested over a botched 2002 bombing on an Arab girls’ school in Jerusalem. The wounded boy’s father, a member of the underground, is currently serving a 15-year sentence for his involvement in that bombing attempt.

Avinoam Maymon, a 45-year-old resident of the extremist settlement, said he tried to stop the assailant after the attack, violently struggling with him for a minute or two.

“He tried to kill me. I grabbed his hand and took the ax and he escaped,” he told the Associated Press.

He said the attacker fled to a neighboring “murderous village.”

The attacker apparently entered Bat Ayin, located between Jerusalem and the southern West Bank city of Hebron, unhindered. The religious settlers have refused to build a security fence around their community – standard practice in most settlements – saying it would be a sign of weakness.

The attack came a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office and will likely heighten tensions with the Palestinians. The leader of the hawkish Likud Party has promised a firm hand against militants and lowered expectations on the prospects for peace.

A murky Palestinian militant group calling itself the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh claimed responsibility for the attack in an e-mail sent to the AP.